MAGA attacks show how thoroughly Christian extremism has hijacked the GOP: report

Liberal Current writer Alan Elrod says Christian nationalists have commandeered the Republican Paty enough to now dictate their extremist messaging through the party’s mouthpiece.

On Tuesday, the official NRSC account on X, representing Senate Republicans, posted a clip of Texas Democratic candidate James Talarico, bashing him for portraying Jesus Christ as a figure of empathy and caring. The clip showed Talarico — a Presbyterian seminarian — saying: “Christ is the immigrant deported without due process. Christ is the senior deprived of their Social Security benefits. Christ is the protestor kidnapped in an unmarked vehicle by plain clothes officers.”

In essence, Christ was a gentle victim, which rather fits the image considering how his story ends.

But the purpose of the NRSC post was to make Talarico a target for the GOP’s Christian nationalist wing — and it worked.

“To be clear: This is blasphemy,” responded Christian nationalist William Wolfe below the post.

White supremacist and Christian influencer C. Jay Engel also chimed in, arguing that Talarico was “peddling a left-wing version of Christian nationalism where social justice issues dominate.” Colorado-based TPUSA Faith organizer Chris Goble had his own say, claiming “This is the dumbest, most patently absurd on its face drivel imaginable. It's also horrifically evil. If he does not repent, this man will one day face transcendent wrath. If we're dumb enough to fall for this crap, he will be our judgment.”

TPSU Faith claims it “exists to unite the Church around primary doctrine and to eliminate wokeism from the American pulpit.”

But Talarico has become “an object of intense scorn among America’s right-wing Christian extremists,” said Elrod. Josh Howerton, the pastor of Lakepointe Church in Dallas, describes Talarico’s promotion of an open, social justice–oriented Gospel as “an existential threat,” warning, “Progressivism will hollow out your religion and wear it like a skin suit.”

Howerton, by the way, is the same personality who labors to frame Jesus as a weapon-toting warrior, claiming “Jesus told people to buy self-defense weapons; Jesus was majority-culture in his region; Jesus only selected men for leadership positions,” among other descriptions.

But what shocks Elrod is how dedicated the Christian right is to twisting Christ into something he never was. Conservative mag Townhall editor Jeff Quarles, for example, positions extremist right-wing Christians as the subjects of state abuse, arguing that Christ is more like people “thrown in a cage even though they engaged in no violence on Jan. 6.” Quarles also inserts Jan. 6 rioters and illegal gun manufacturer Dexter Taylor into the ranks of the persecuted by comparing Christ to “people like Dexter Taylor, who is serving ten years in prison simply for manufacturing [illegal] firearms.”

“It gets at the core of the ever-stronger fusion between extremist right-wing Christianity and the Republican Party, and the renewed institutionalization of white nationalism and male supremacy as the doctrine of an entire party,” said Elrod. “The attacks on Talarico highlight just how far down that road we now are.”

“The Republican Party is wholly captured by this thinking, one that sees the Gospel as a story of masculine dominance and power and an authorizing narrative for a politics of misogyny, racism, and tyranny,” Elrod continued. “… [O]nly the heroes, the protagonists of the story, can ever be wronged. Their job is to exert their will, like cowboy crusaders, and it’s the world’s job to accede to this. This is how Christians become both persecutors and persecuted. It’s how the Gospel becomes a tool for exclusion. And it’s what this Republican Party seeks to impose on the nation.

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